Choke

A part of a shotgunbarrel with a smaller diameter than the rest of the barrel. Forming a bottleneck at the end of the barrel, the choke is used to avoid an early scattering of the shot, thereby improving the killing range of the weapon, but shrinking the size of the pattern (the swarm of lead pellets) makes it harder to hit the target.

The cover depicts six skeletal statues against a stormy sky which, according to the band's website, seemed to mock the six chubby figures on stage.

Rating: 4 out of 5. This album's obscurity is undeserved, and is well worth the hunt in the Americas. This is The Beauties at their most playful, before the pop would go completely to their heads, before the tensions would drive singer Brianna Corrigan from the group, before they would descend into a permanent mid-life crisis.

The choke is a small hole about a quarter-inch wide on the side of pipes and bongs usually used for smoking marijuana. Also called a carb, you hold your finger over the choke while inhaling, permitting the chamber to fill with smoke.

With a pipe, when the chamber is full you may remove your finger, permitting a rush of air into the lungs. Inexperienced smokers may partly cover the hole on a pipe to permit a mixture of air and smoke to be inhaled instead, resulting in a milder, less painful hit.

With most bongs, the smoker holds their finger over the choke until the chamber fills with a sufficient amount of smoke, then, generally they remove the finger, letting air rush into the chamber and pushing all the smoke into their lungs.

Essentially a choke is a method of allowing all smoke to be removed from inside of the device, minimizing waste.

Palahniuk's inspiration for this book was his father who, following the death of Chuck's mother, was dating and sleeping around on a fairly constant basis, much to the consternation of his sons. He was found burned to death with one of his recent conquests at a cabin in the woods during the filming of Fight Club, apparently the victim of the woman's ex-husband, who swore he would visit that fate on anybody he caught with her.

Further details and exerpts can be found at the fan site, http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net.

1. [common] To reject input, often
ungracefully. "NULs make System V's lpr(1) choke." "I
tried building an EMACS binary to use X, but
cpp(1) choked on all those #defines." See
barf, gag, vi. 2. [MIT] More generally, to fail at
any endeavor, but with some flair or bravado; the popular
definition is "to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

The world is falling apart. Torn asunder, shit like that. I’m serious, this is Chuck Palahniuk’s world. http://google.com/search?q=palahniuk+apocalyptic returns 256 hits as of today. Replace "apocalyptic" with "nihilistic" and you get 299 results.
This is very serious business. Palahniuk, this evil, smug Vonnegut-wannabe, is trying to accelerate the end of the world, and he don't care.

And now that I have your attention, I'd like to point out that, yes, the world is ending. On the radio, just last night, I heard a complete (and scientific) breakdown of just how, over the next two years, the world climate will swing (almost totally) into the inhabitable range (I blame the gays). And I trust my radio.

And Palahniuk is laughing his evil ass off.

And at this point, I'd like to make several things clear:

Fight Club is about fascism and violence, not about salvaging whatever bit of humanity you have left.

Palahniuk's Survivor is a tribute to cultism and mindlessly following leaders, agents, television, et cetera; it is not a critique of these things.

Don't think for a second that, although it appears that the central theme in Choke is building things yourself, this is anywhere near Palahnuik's point. This is a novel about manipulation. It's about a man named Vincent who, while eating in restaurants, stuffs large pieces of meat into the back of his throat and then falls backward in his chair, pretending to choke so that someone, some stranger, will perform the Heimilich Maneuver on his faking ass.

Why I do this is to make money. . . . It's that old Chinese custom where if somebody saves your life, they're responsible for you forever.

Don't make too much of Vincent's friend Denny, who draws pictures and builds sculptures, who spends his days collecting rocks, because it keeps him too busy to masturbate. Don't make too much of the idea of building, as in the act of building that Denny goes through, or of growing, as Vincent would seem to be at least trying to do. These are what those in the business call red herrings. When he says

"Just supposing," I say, "Jesus Christ had to practice being the Son of God to get any good at it . . . What if Jesus spent all his growing up getting things wrong . . . before he ever got a single miracle right?"

don't think he's being serious. This is not profound. What you should concentrate on are lines that critics quote, such as

Some woman writes about how she's started a prayer chain for me. A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around.

which are, of course, smug and sarcastic. This is the real Palahniuk. This is as profound as Palahnuik is ever going to be.

Golf-Greg Norman, 1996 Masters. With a six-stroke lead at the beginning of the final round, Norman shoots 79 and loses by six to Nick Faldo in the biggest final roundcomeback in Masters history.

Golf-Jean Van de Velde, 2000 British Open. Going into the last hole with a three shot lead, the Frenchman proceeds to hit the ball in the water(after getting lucky two other times), making triple bogey and forcing a playoff, which he eventually lost to Paul Laurie.

Pulling the choke knob out causes a flap on the air intake to close, restricting the airflow, hence enriching the gasoline air mixture1, enabling the car to start more easily and run more smoothly when the engine is cold. Some chokes also increase the idle tickover to help with warming up and reduce stalling.2

A common problem is to use too much choke trying to start the car, and flooding the engine.

Manual chokes have been replaced, first by mechanical automatic chokes, then later by software in the engine management unit. A mechanical automatic choke works the flap by means of a bimetallic strip.

Cold start problems have not been completely solved by engine manangement electronics. There can still be problems in the temperature sensors, wiring or one of the stepper motors, which are difficult to diagnose let alone fix, and require specialist knowledge. EMUs sometimes fail in the opposite way, racing at idle and running on.

1According to stupot, on an SU carburetor, the choke doesn't move a flap in the air intake, instead it opens the jet supplying the fuel to make the mixture more rich.